


All Disastrous Things

by Helholden



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-01
Updated: 2014-10-01
Packaged: 2018-02-19 11:38:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2386958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Helholden/pseuds/Helholden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peter rears back like a cornered animal and hisses through sudden elongated razor-sharp canines, his eyes flaring with a bright steel blue.</p><p>Lydia does, after all, think she is getting the better end of the bargain.</p><p>Written for a tumblr prompt — Peter goes on a pseudo-redemption arc, and when the next nastiness comes at them, Lydia gives him the Amulet from Buffy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All Disastrous Things

**Author's Note:**

> **Author's Notes:** I'm so sorry this one took so long to fulfill! I had some trouble with getting the idea to work, but I hope this prompt is close to your wishes. I played around with some ideas that make it different from the Buffy universe Amulet, though, and definitely wanted to keep Peter more on the nasty side for this, too. But, as for the ending, I kept it very close to the Buffy story (technically, the Angel story if you watched that spinoff of Buffy).
> 
> This is also an AU for the course of Season 4, including the finale.

_* * *_

 

When Derek returns from one of his many trips with Braeden, he drops a duffle bag onto the coffee table with a heavy clunk and steps back.

 

“That’s all I could find,” he says.

 

“Well, let’s see what’s _in_ it,” Stiles adds, spreading his arms open wide. When he looks around and sees no one object to his suggestion, he snatches the bag and nearly rips the zipper off in his eagerness to get inside.

 

The boy observes the blunt objects, things that might wield considerable power for someone like him who so lacks it, while Lydia pours over an old leather-bound tome Derek obtained from their old contact.

 

Peter stands back in the shadows, examines them from a distance, and waits for an opportune moment.

 

It comes in the form of an amulet, a heavy crystal on a tarnished golden chain that barely catches the light from all of the dust and dirt and oils it has accumulated, and Peter finds himself stepping forward, drawn to it.

 

Stiles notices him first, freezing in place like a deer caught in the headlights of a moving car.

 

“What is he doing here?” Stiles asks immediately.

 

Peter cuts a rueful smirk. “Why, this is my nephew’s apartment, and I do believe I was invited . . . ”

 

Derek aims a dubious look between the two of them. “I’m not dealing with any bullshit today, so don’t even start. Either one of you.” Stiles looks like he is about to say something, but Derek raises his hand and cuts it quickly through the air. “ _Neither_ one of you,” he repeats firmly, and Stiles closes his mouth and sits a little straighter. His feathers are ruffled, but he’ll survive.

 

Lydia, more composed than her companion, doesn’t even look surprised to see him here.

 

She keeps her eyes on him, though, as he approaches the table.

 

“What’s this?” Peter asks, scooping up the amulet from the table. The chain is like cold water rushing against his palm, and it bears a considerable weight. It looks heavy, but it feels heavier. As dull as the metal is, the crystal itself is faceted with sharp cuts that catch in the light, sending little beams of sunlight in every direction as it whirls slowly through the air.

 

The look on Derek’s face falters. “I don’t know,” he says, shrugging his shoulders. “He didn’t say much about it. Said he didn’t know much to tell, but it’s some kind of ward. Keeps evil away, or something like that.”

 

“Must be past its expiration date,” mutters Stiles.

 

Normally, Peter would have a biting comeback for that, but his eyes are locked on the crystal as it spins, and he feels, incongruously, as if he is being pulled _towards_ it. The sound drowns out of his ears, a hollow ringing replacing it, and he leans forward—

 

“Maybe it’s just not what he thought it was,” Lydia states from the couch.

 

Her words snap Peter back to reality. He pauses, blinks his eyes into focus, and looks over at her. She appears a little unsettled herself, shifting in her seat, the tome large on her lap. Peter lowers the necklace, the hairs on the back of his neck bristling as he feels an unnatural feeling take hold in him. _Fear_.

 

He chucks the amulet onto the table. It clatters loudly, causing Stiles to swear and Lydia to jolt and Derek to look at him like Peter just crashed his party by jumping through the window unannounced.

 

“You shouldn’t accept trinkets from strangers,” he says, which is only half-true. The man Derek went to visit is not someone they haven’t known before, but they haven’t known him in such a long time, and times makes strangers of all men eventually. Time unaccounted for can turn a person towards all sorts of strange directions. It is something Peter has much familiarity with. Six long years of familiarity, in fact.

 

He waltzes out of the apartment faster than he means to, boots heavy on the concrete.

 

Lydia looks down at the amulet as he leaves and glances back at Peter’s head before he disappears beyond the slide of the door.

 

She makes a split second decision when none of them are looking and pockets the amulet in her cardigan.

 

She has many books and resources, and she intends to use them.

 

-

 

Lydia looks down at her phone. She stares at it, burrowing holes into the glass with her glare. She still has Peter’s number, but she hesitates to call it and give him the wrong impression. Last time, she had Allison to accompany her and keep her safe. She doesn’t fully trust Peter Hale, but she trusts his intellect, though not his capacity for twisting the truth to suit his needs.

 

Still, she knows more about the amulet than he does, and he didn’t seem to like it much the last time he saw it.

 

Sighing deeply, Lydia hits her steering wheel and gives in. She pushes the number into her phone and calls it. It rings twice. He picks up. He sounds surprised, and there is a tinge of gloating in his voice when he says _I knew you would call_. Lydia cannot suppress the urge to roll her eyes and does just that before asking if she can come over to talk to him about something that might help them stop Kate Argent.

 

“I need your opinion,” Lydia says, not finding the words easy at all.

 

Peter pauses, his silence giving away something Lydia has not caught onto yet. “Of course,” he says, more congenially than he should, and that’s when Lydia realizes something is not right.

 

When the phone clicks dead, she finds her trust in him is even less than before and her heart beats a little faster in fear.

 

She is walking a tightrope over a wolf’s den, and there is no net to catch her if she falls.

 

-

 

“I don’t do favors for free,” Peter says. His words burn like ice against her skin.

 

Lydia expected this, though. “What do you want in return?” she asks, feeling an uneasy weight settle into the pit of her stomach. She shifts her weight onto her other foot.

 

Peter narrows his eyes at her from across the room, a small smile curling at the corner of his lips. Lydia doesn’t say _no sexual favors_ because she doesn’t even want him to think of any. Besides, it’s not up Peter’s alley. He is smarter than that. He knows to ask for something of weight, of value. Something that can benefit him, not pleasure him. Benefits are a pleasure to him, after all.

 

If there is one thing Lydia can count on, it’s that he is a man of business.

 

“I’ll help you test,” Peter says idly, waving his hand in a dismissive gesture, “whatever it is you want to test, if you promise to come with me whenever Kate strikes next.”

 

Lydia narrows her eyes. It seems simple, but almost too simple. “What do you mean?” she asks. “Come with you? Come with you where?”

 

“Well,” Peter adds, “to fight Kate, if we have to fight her—or hide, if you do so incline in that direction.” He gives her a knowing smile that says she won’t hide. He knows her too well for that. His look makes her uncomfortable, and Lydia shifts her weight again, feeling the unwelcome memories bubble up of him nestled in the warm alcoves of her brain like a naked man cradling her back in the dark, his skin soiled with mud and dirt, bringing his cold scrapes and scratches and worms and the hot huff of a wolf’s breath through parted teeth against the curve of her neck.

 

“It would be beneficial to have a banshee nearby,” Peter adds slowly, calculating her expression as he comes around the table to her side. He crosses his arms, leaning into it. “I have no wish to die again, and there is a chance you could help me avoid a terrible situation that might cause that. That,” he continues, raising a single finger, “and I can help you. By offering you physical protection should Kate come for you.”

 

 _Business_ , Lydia reminds herself. This is the Peter she knows. He wants to use her to protect himself. _As always_ , she thinks bitterly.

 

But this is something she can work with.

 

“Deal,” Lydia says, and she extends her hand.

 

Peter seems a little taken off guard, but the moment passes quickly as he sheds the look from his eyes like a snake releasing its old skin and clasps her hand for a shake. When they part, Lydia reaches into her bag and pulls out the amulet.

 

“Now,” she says, “for my part.”

 

Peter rears back like a cornered animal and hisses through sudden elongated razor-sharp canines, his eyes flaring with a bright steel blue.

 

Lydia does, after all, think she is getting the better end of the bargain.

 

-

 

They try various things with the amulet, none of which seem to have any effect. As much as the object disturbs Peter, it doesn’t seem to have the power to do much of anything else. She tries to get him to hold it, and then she tries an incantation without results. Peter offers attempting to break it with a much too cheerful attitude— _to see what’s inside, of course_ , he says. Lydia glares at him, and they don’t try that.

 

Finally, all out of ideas and having tried all of them, Lydia plops down onto the couch in utter exhaustion. “I don’t know what else to do,” she says, touching her forehead.

 

Peter is silent at first. He is standing up, a few feet away. He doesn’t try to approach her. “What do you know about it so far?” he asks, slowly. Testing the waters, but Lydia is too frustrated and too tired to read any further than that, and she speaks far too openly as well because of it.

 

She gestures at the discarded amulet, which is lying on the coffee table upon an ivory kerchief.

 

“It’s supposed to be an object of absorption. All I could find on it was that these were occasionally made almost as talismans for protection, like a dream-catcher, only it’s meant to draw other things into it that aren’t dreams. It’s supposed to have some kind of power to keep balance, to draw inside of it the negative energy, leaving behind only the clean energy—the positive. Some sources, which were contested, said they could be used as weapons, but I don’t see how something—” Lydia sighs at the hindrance, shaking her head as she pulls her hand away from where it rests against her forehead.

 

Peter remains quiet. When he finally speaks, there is a noticeable undertone of subdued anger beneath the bite of his words. “And you brought this here,” he says, “to test this. On me.”

 

Lydia falls still. She raises her head to look up at him. “Nothing you wouldn’t do,” she says, meeting his gaze with a steel all her own.

 

She sees the twitch between his lip and his nose, knows that look and what it means on him, but she stands her ground because nothing bad happened to him and Peter is unlikely to hold this against her in the long run. He can’t, after all, without admitting something about himself that he doesn’t believe.

 

And Lydia is sure he doesn’t believe it.

 

Definitely not on the surface, anyway. Subconsciously, Lydia doesn’t know where Peter stands. He was in her head. She never had the horror of being in his.

 

The tension leaves Peter’s shoulders. He relaxes and turns away.

 

“You still owe me your end of the bargain,” he tells her as he walks towards the windows. “We agreed to me helping you test it. We didn’t agree to find any results before you lived up to your end of the deal.”

 

Lydia bites down hard on her tongue. Hard enough to draw blood.

 

She tastes iron and bitterness and disappointment. Things she has all come to associate with Peter Hale.

 

-

 

 

The call comes in the afternoon while she is at the library doing some research.

 

“We have to drive to _Mexico_ ,” Peter says hurriedly on the other end, but not without firmness to instill in her the memory of their bargain. “Kate has kidnapped your precious Scott McCall.”

 

Lydia’s eyes go wide.

 

She tells him exactly where she is and scoops up her purse, running out the door and leaving all of her books behind her.

 

-

 

The thing is Peter knows Lydia will scream when Scott McCall is about to die, but he won’t be killing him. No, Peter has a much better plan than that. He can’t steal a True Alpha’s power, but he thinks he can transfer it to someone who he can steal it from. It’s not a perfect plan, but it’s a plan, and he’s blind with enough rage and ambition to the point that he will take it and believe in it, even if it might fail.

 

But when the rocks come down around them, the whole temple shuddering on the edge of a dying breath as the Berserkers beat out every pillar that holds this place up in the dust of this empty desert, Lydia’s scream echoes out through the rubble. It resonates like a beacon, breaking past every careful and diligent thought Peter has ever spent on this plan—and he hesitates. He looks back.

 

It’s not the scream of a banshee. It’s the scream of a girl, and he doesn’t recall particularly caring before, but he pauses and sometimes a pause is enough to say too much.

 

They were separated. He was supposed to keep her with him, but they got separated, and he kept on because he had a plan. He had a _plan_ , a good plan, and it’s almost done—

 

Truth be told, Peter hadn’t wanted her here at all.

 

His first option had been to trap her in Beacon Hills somehow, but he had pulled back on that thought. Peter doesn’t trust the Berserkers, and he certainly doesn’t trust Kate, which had left him with few choices, and now—

 

“ _Help!_ ”

 

He looks forward, then behind. He has to make a choice. He has to pick Scott or her.

 

Lydia screams again.

 

He grunts in frustration and tears back the way he came, running through tunnels that are halfway blocked with fallen stones and choked with dust. He finds her in a cavern of beams above a deep drop into a black pit that doesn’t seem to have a bottom. On closer inspection, he sees it below with his heightened sight. It’s so far down it will kill her, and Lydia is dangling by a beam, the floor having fallen right out from under her feet. Her fingers, digging into the wood, are corpse-white.

 

It’s a twelve second window with a sixty-four foot drop, but six feet too soon from the day he’s ready to die.

 

He makes the jump.

 

His weight alone nearby breaks the beam, and he clasps her arm and yanks her up. He throws her over his shoulder and jumps again to the next beam and runs the rest of the way to solid ground.

 

When he puts her down, he smells the blood and bone. Her leg is injured, bleeding beneath her.

 

Lydia stares at him with wide, glassy eyes.

 

“Why?” she suddenly says, and Peter’s mouth twitches.

 

“Get _out_ of here,” he hisses at her, but how, that’s the question. Can she even walk? He grabs her leg ungently, trying to inspect it.

 

“Ow!” Lydia hisses back, and she tries to pull away.

 

“Stop movin—” Peter freezes, staring at her chest.

 

The crystal amulet dangles low from the chain around her neck, nestled in the crevice of her blouse, a soft light seeming to emit from the center of it.

 

Lydia notices his stare and looks down, too, freezing in shock as well. She lets out a little gasp of realization, an odd time to remember something, but it comes to her all the same. “Of course,” she whispers. “The one thing we didn’t do—wear it—”

 

But the light grows and the crystal singes her blouse, and Lydia cries out again in pain as it burns her, backing away even though the motion doesn’t get her away from the amulet, only away from Peter. He acts quickly, snatching the crystal in his fist and yanking it from her neck. The chain snaps, and it burns his hand—smoking, charred flesh as it burns hotter and hotter.

 

Peter doesn’t know what the amulet is doing or how, but it ignites a flame from within and burns him from the inside out until he is encapsulated in light and screaming in agony. The light covers the entire cavern, blinding and bright, and then it explodes and fills each of the hallways until the temple is drenched in it.

 

-

 

The Berserkers turn to dust and ash and broken glass. Kate falls as well, screaming in anguish as her newfound powers leave her. The curse on Scott breaks before the final blow of the knife that has been meant to kill him makes contact, and it’s almost as if the canvas has been wiped clean and begun anew.

 

Peter Hale’s body is gone. Lydia never says she saw him just disappear, and no one votes to look for him.

 

Lydia doesn’t think there’s a point.

 

The amulet, however, is left behind, and something of the memory of what she experienced causes Lydia to keep it.

 

She doesn’t know why.

 

The whole way home, she holds it close to her chest and clenches her fist around the crystal pendant until her nails draw blood.

 

It seeps onto the crystal, tainting the unblemished surface.

 

When she gets home and finally puts it away, the blood is long gone.

 

-

 

With her mind on the verge of sleep, Lydia stretches out a hand beneath her pillow. She breathes in deep. Cool, crisp air fills her lungs as a sense of peace washes over her. She slips further away into the dream world, fingers loosening, the amulet with its newly repaired chain lying on the bed beside her.

 

Her fingers spread out reflexively, tips grazing against the smooth cut facets on the crystal.

 

And Lydia smells grass—wet grass—and soil and cold and heat and sogginess, and then dryness, warmth, darkness, a den in the depths of her mind, and she reaches out to it, stumbling in the dark into a cave beneath the world that smells of something both familiar and yet unsettling.

 

With hands groping for purchase against the rocks on either side of her as she descends deeper, Lydia hardly realizes she is still in her own soft bed back at home.

 

A hot breath washes over the shell of her ear, and skin—skin covered in the mud and dirt of the earth presses to her back as fangs accompany the breath and graze her ear. “ _Lydia . . ._ ” hisses a rasping voice.

 

In the dark, Lydia stills.

 

 


End file.
